1. Technical Field
The present application generally relates to vacuum microelectronic and nanoelectronic devices and methods of making the same.
2. Discussion of Related Prior Art
Vacuum tube and integrated circuit devices and their fabrication have been well-known for many years. Recently, techniques originally used for fabrication of integrated circuit devices and hybrid devices comprising carbon nanotube based electronic elements have been applied to make nano-scale devices. Such electronic devices offer several advantages over traditional integrated circuit devices. Vacuum is an ideal electron transport medium where electrons travel at high speeds compared to high mobility semiconductor solids such as GaAs and SiC. These high speeds increase the device's switching speed. Moreover, in vacuum devices, there is no heat produced during electron transportation as in traditional integrated circuits. This is because in vacuum devices, there is no scattering medium to impede electron transport. An additional advantage of vacuum microelectronic devices is that they are relatively insensitive to temperature and radiation compared to traditional integrated circuit devices. Since no active junction regions exist, there is no associated parasitic capacitance and the semiconductor medium used for processing vacuum nanoelectronic devices does not need to be as of high a quality as used in traditional integrated circuit devices. Because processing steps are simplified, manufacturing costs for vacuum microelectronic devices is decreased.
The triode is a three-terminal device comprising a cathode, a grid, and a plate and can be used as an amplifier for electronic or audio signals. A triode (or 3-terminal vacuum tube) operates by heating a cathode electrode so that electrons are emitted by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Electrons are directed toward an anode plate by a high electric field. The electrons can be modulated by applying a voltage on the grid structure. The advent of the vacuum tube triodes accelerated the development of computers. Electronic tubes were used in several different computer designs in the late 1940's and early 1950's. But the limits of these tubes were soon reached. As the electric circuits became more complicated, one needed more and more triodes. Engineers packed several triodes into one vacuum tube to make the tube circuits more efficient.
As stated above, the electron pathway in a tube triode is through a vacuum. A triode grid can control current through the vacuum, analogously to the way a gate controls current through the solid-material channel of a field effect transistor. The high velocity of electrons through a vacuum allows for a triode to be a useful high-frequency device. Because of problems inherent in these tube devices, modem integrated circuits have surpassed and replaced vacuum tube technology for fabrication of computer and electronic systems. The problems include: leakage, the metal that emitted electrons in the vacuum tubes burned out, the requirement of large thermal powers for electron emission and large circuits took too much energy to run, etc. Early computers were built with over 10,000 vacuum tubes and occupied huge amounts of space. In order to overcome problems of the vacuum tubes, scientists began to consider how one might control electrons in solid materials, like metals and semiconductors. Transistors, such as field effect transistors and metal oxide field effect transistors took the place of the bulky conventional vacuum tube-based amplifiers and switches (triodes). Transistors were later integrated into circuit boards, and made from the same materials and in the same procedures as other electronic elements on those circuit boards.
However, even with current high-speed semiconductor technology, power amplification is still a problem for the gigahertz frequencies. Large numbers of transistors with complex circuitry and thermal management schemes are required to generate the high power and high frequencies for applications such as space-based applications, radar, wireless communications and electronic warfare. Such disadvantages associated with solid-state semiconductor technology make vacuum tube technology appealing, since vacuum tubes have large electron speeds with much smaller power requirements. Another advantage of vacuum tube technology is that it is inherently radiation hard, whereas semiconductor charge-storage mediums are not and need to be radiation hardened by costly and complex fabrication techniques. Therefore, the ability to fabricate triodes and other vacuum technologies with technologies and integrated circuit fabrication techniques may allow for the production of high speed and low power devices that can be employed for radiation intensive devices such as radar, wireless communications, electronic warfare and any space based electronics.
Integrated triodes have been described; see e.g. Garner, D. M., Long, G. M., Herbison, D., Amaratunga, G. A. J. Field-emission triode with integrated anodes. Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B, Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures, 18, (2), 914-918 (March/April 2000). The operating voltage described is relatively large. To date, the fabrication of a triode (amplifier) using relatively low, useful voltages has not been feasible in integrated circuitry.
Bower et al. have described a micro triode using carbon nanotubes as field emitters. See “On-Chip Vacuum Microtriode Using Carbon Nanotube Field Emitters”, Applied Physics Letters, Vol 80, No. 20, (2002) 3820-3822 and “A micromachined vacuum triode using a carbon nanotube cold cathode”, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Vol. 4, No. 8, (2002), 1478-1483. Bower employs multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs) as a cold cathode for electron emission in the triode device. Because the triode devices described in Bower utilize large feature sizes greater than 20 microns to >100 microns and a method that typically produces highly defective and varying quality of MWNTs at high temperatures (not CMOS compatible), the voltages necessary for field emission are >100 volts, still much higher than feasible for integrated circuit applications. There is therefore a need in the art for triodes of smaller feature size which require smaller voltages for electron emission.
The large feature sizes employed by others to fabricate the micro-machined vacuum tubes has limited them to 3-terminals. Fabricating higher order vacuum tubes such as tetrodes and pentodes is also not feasible with their designs and processes.
Carbon nanotubes have been found to be excellent conductors or semiconductors, depending on the chirality of a given tube, and Ward et al. have described films of nanotubes which may comprise composites of both conducting and semiconducting nanotubes or only single types of nanotubes. Nanotube films are more fully described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/341,005, entitled Methods of Making Carbon Nanotube Films, Layers, Fabrics, Ribbons, Elements and Articles, the entire contents of which are herein incorporated in their entirety. Such films may be patterned into ribbons or traces and may act as electrical connections between elements.
The inventors envision the utilization of a carbon nanotube fabric as a grid structure to control the current flow between cathode and anode of a triode and of a tetrode and pentode.